Waymo rides cost more than Uber or Lyft and people are paying anyway
(techcrunch.com)463 points by achristmascarl 4 days ago
463 points by achristmascarl 4 days ago
I've had a couple bad experiences with Lyft recently, including one time the driver must have clicked that they picked me up while a block away, because I could see the lyft driving to the destination without me. I tried to get a refund since I was obviously waiting my start location the whole time, but the system claimed the drive went from start to finish (even though I wasn't in the car), so no refund.
Same thing happened to me, and the support system automatically decided nothing was wrong whatsoever despite my phone certainly sending a very different location from the driver. And the madness was I couldn't even book another ride as I was technically in one.
So I ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue.
Is this some sort of a scam? The driver cannot even mark the ride as completed without being in the area right? So they have to drive it anyway. I can’t imagine they would be on the platform for long if this happened on a regular basis. I would say it’s probably an accident but how could this behavior be accidental? Someone might accidentally say that they picked you up, but they couldn’t accidentally then drive an empty car to the destination.
> ended up getting it resolved via the security panic button which did put me through to a real person who was empathetic to the issue
For both Uber and Lyft this is what I do. Which is wild since the only other company I auto-escalate-to-cancellation with is Comcast.
Waymo isn’t winning because it’s automated. It’s winning because the major players left the premium segment of the market for grabs.
I don’t know why they don’t require it. Every Uber in Porto Rico uses the PIN but I’ve only had one in the mainland USA ask for it.
That's must be annoying to say the least. In India drivers require an OTP to start a ride.
The OTP is the same for a user across rides, so I have mine memorised which is nifty. No fiddling with the phone during boarding.
On security: exploiting this would require the driver to stay in my vicinity the next time I book a ride, and also get the ride assigned to them. In a high population density area, it's rare - I've never had the same driver twice.
Uber in India gives me a different OTP for each ride. A different ride-hailing app I use occasionally uses a PIN tied to a user.
OTPs are a simple solution to fraudulent rides that it's surprising it's not implemented universally, given all the complaints in this thread.
I’ve heard the story from the other side as well: App reports ride is arriving, people get in, they go the wrong way and see their original ride stating that you are not there and leave again.
So it may not be intentional. Just coincidence and poor verification.
I waited 40 minutes for a Lyft at an airport because the driver made up a story about an accident and traffic, in the airport. No one else seemed to be affected by this traffic- so eventually I tried booking an Uber. It arrived 3 minutes later.
20 minutes after that the Lyft driver keeps texting me “where are you?!”. Their turn to wait!
Saw later they just started the ride without me and drove to my hotel.
Lyft said “this trip was completed, no refund”. Welp, app deleted.
I've had several cases of drivers just not picking me up. Reading their time to move anywhere at all, driving away and keep getting further and further away, it driving towards me only to turn some other direction. I always just cancel on them and have never had to pay a cancellation fee. I think once or twice they "picked me up" a block away. I'm pretty sure I was able to cancel or end the ride on that too, definitely was never charged though I don't recall if I had to use the support. But I never let it actually complete the trip when I wasn't riding. But I was always very miffed when anything like that happened as I did not appreciate them wasting my time.
On Uber I paid for priority pickup and watched as a driver drove within two blocks of my home and then sat in a neighborhood for 10 minutes. I finally message "Everything OK?" and get no reply but they finish their journey to my place.
The car reeked of weed.
In my experience, you should prepare for retaliation when you do a charge back.
If you really want to delete the app, a chargeback is the surest way to permanently remove yourself from the platform.
> Their determination? I wasn't entitled to a $3 refund.
Frustratingly, Lyft’s position on this is that if you don’t like the car that arrives you should reject it when it arrives, otherwise you’re not entitled to a (even partial) refund, even when they know on their end that the car they sent doesn’t match what you paid extra for.
This seems... interesting, legally speaking. I imagine the idea is that you're implicitly accepting alterations to the previous contract by opting to take the car? Would that argument hold water, legally?
I ran into a similar arbitration with a condo I rented for a long weekend. There was a significant issue and they weren't able to provide another place. We stayed there and had contractors in and out for the next couple of days. They refused to refund me, so I tried through my credit card to get a refund and they said "well you should have just left, then we would refund you. But since you stayed, the contract is fulfilled."
Tip: You can take Waymo to just outside the economy lot, then hop on the shuttle to the terminals. The shuttles have their own dedicated lane for going around the loop, so this isn't even that much more time. It's my new favorite way to get to LAX.
Ah, I saw the economy lot as a potential option. I tried to get the location to resolve on the app, but I think I only tried the lot itself and not directly adjacent to it. Thank you for pointing this out!
Uber has done that to me. You pick a class but what you get seems unrelated.
I need more space for luggage and such and ... some "mid-sized" SUV picks me up that has about as much space a regular sedan anyway ... often the same type of vehicle that picked me up the previous day as a regular vehicle.
I paid extra and scheduled an Uber with a child seat. After waiting 30 minutes, when the car showed up, there was no car seat so the driver canceled right away and drove off. Lesson learned.
Same here. To alter-quote The Simpsons, "My eyes! The classes do nothing!"
Shortly after pandemic, I noticed "corridor fees" on vastly different routes which, mysteriously, bumped-up the price by the same percentage across each route--but only after the ride had completed. The price I was quoted was not remotely close to the price I was charged.
I did the customer service messaging thing. The first time, they removed it. The second and third time, they declined to remove it.
I now "decline" riding Uber unless there's no other option.
As much as I love to hate on Uber and Lyft, tacked on fees like this are often due to state / federal government, and the rideshare service hands are tied. Uber tags on a very long list of random fees when I Uber out of SFO, but when I investigated them, they were all random taxes from the city / state.
If they want to jack up the prices they can just increase them - they don't need to add random fees.
Uber seems wilfully deceptive in so many ways. The initial listing of rides including details of vehicles and prices, which looks like an actual offer, but the app then goes off to try and find something similar. Try being a shop, selling someone an item and then going out back to rummage around and see if you actually have anything like what you sold. And then the 'fixed price' you agreed on gets arbitrarily changed on half the trips if traffic gets worse or the driver takes a different route. If I book a trip from the airport, the airport's charge for rideshare lane usage isn't an "unanticipated expense". It's just skeezy.
I believe they bin vehicles by available seating and not by things like luggage.
Before Uber and Lyft destroyed the functioning taxi market, you got Mercedes by default for a traditional, regulated taxi in many EU countries.
You didn't have to argue, interact with a surveillance company, interact with customer service etc. All you needed to do is pick up the phone and get a luxury ride without tracking or surveillance.
My experience in my first-world country is that all I needed was to spend 10min on the phone to be told there’s no taxi available, or to be told it’ll take 30min and actually it take 1h30. Drivers aren’t any more amicable than uber drivers either (less, if anything).
Not to speak of many countries where taxis are outright scammers and getting into one is taking a real danger.
Lol. Before Uber 'destroyed' the functioning taxi market in Amsterdam, getting a taxi after going out meant waiting for sometimes up to 45 minutes. It meant standing in a line and when someone cut the line in front of you, saying something about it could get you in a fight. Taxi drivers often were (former) criminals who cashed in their savings of black money to get a taxi license and a quiet life. Occasionally tourists were robbed or taken on detours, good luck to get your money back in those days. And I'm not even mentioning the outrageous prices yet for a taxi drive in the city in those days.
Uber might not be 100% perfect but it has been a real blessing, a salvation of all the misery that we had to endure in the 'functioning' taxi market.
I often tried taking taxis after reading about shady practices of Uber and Lyft. I usually came away saying “never again.”
You wait too long to get picked up by a smelly dirty old car and then they pull stuff like pretending the card reader is broken to get you to stop at an ATM so they can avoid taxes.
The worst experiences were in SF. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these companies started there. Of course SF is uniquely dysfunctional in many ways.
I’ve read many comments online over the years to the effect that people would pay more for Uber and Lyft to destroy the taxi industry.
What’s wrong with the taxi industry is that it’s a cartel, especially in major cities, and everyone knows when you have a monopoly or a cartel everything starts to suck.
Yeah, before Uber and Lyft I would get a Mercedes.
Except that it took forever. I had no idea when anyone would show up. The driver was annoyed and drove like an insane person. The few times I've actually feared for my life have been on highways with taxi drivers. It was incredibly expensive.
Oh, and half the time they ripped you off.
Yup. And there was no tracking. So if that person wanted to say, drive an insane route? Enjoy. Take a detour. Done. Or dump your body in the woods. You were totally at their mercy.
The taxi system was horrible. The pinnacle of protectionism carving out its niche of crap.
Before Uber, in France half of the time you got an irascible driver who never had change and whose credit card terminal was non functional.
>the functioning taxi market
Was it? In many EU countries a lot of taxi drivers act like scammers: take you the long way around, they don't issue you receipt by default because they do tax fraud or steal from their employer, you can't pay by card because suddenly the card machine "doesn't work" so they drive you to an ATM, then you pay cash and they try to keep the change, they don't speak English or even the local language, they don't know the local streets or landmarks you're referring to because they're not from there, etc. All that is super annoying. Multiply it if you're a tourist or on a business trip or job interview.
Ride sharing fixed all that since you just punched in the destination in the app (in your own language) and got the price upfront and shielded you from the antics of scammy drivers and the friction of getting to your destination. That's why ride sharing apps were so successful initially.
It wasn't about the price, it was about the friction or lack thereof.
>you got Mercedes by default for a traditional, regulated taxi in many EU countries
Mostly IIRC Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm and some other rich countries, definitely not EU wide.
In the Mercedes running countries taxi rides are also something you do very rarely because they cost a lot.
The rest are like the poster above me described. In Romania, the taxi drivers tried to strike in the capital when Uber showed up and everybody basically laughed at them.
pfah, I remember my Mercedes trip to Paris airport where I had a physical fight with the driver (10 years ago). SO glad to see the taxi business go down the toilet. Easily over 50% of them were scamming tourists.
Charges for goods not delivered as agreed falls under the protection of the Fair Credit Billing Act. If you made a good faith attempt to resolve with the merchant (which you did) you should use your credit card to charge back the amount (some let you request a partial charge back, but if not you can request a full one and explain in the extra info that you want a partial one).
This might not seem worth it for $3, but if they get a lot of these the credit cards/banks might start giving them a hard time about it, so I think it's worth the minor hassle (everything can be done via the credit card app usually)
And then you're forever barred from using the service.
I once did a chargeback of almost $5k to PayPal when someone scammed me (and PayPal sided with scammer). I still have my account, though I don't use it for anything I'd actually need protection on now.
On the other hand I did get banned from an online local selling site (rhymes with Canary) for charging back a small purchase where the wrong thing was delivered and their system for reporting it was broken and they refused to refund. I even tried having a roommate create an account (same address) and they banned that when they made a purchase.
Ironically, taking them to small claims court is likely more effective if you want to send a message without getting banned. It will get more attention, consume more valuable resources on their side (and yours of course), and likely not get you banned unlike the chargeback process where you'd just get auto-mindlessly sorted into the "fraud" bucket.
Why would you want to continue using a service that is ripping you off? If you're at the point where your only recourse is to charge back, that's kind of a bridge burning moment.
> you should use your credit card to charge back the amount
Don't you end up getting a new credit card number and have to deal with updating your details everywhere after doing this?
> This might not seem worth it for $3
It seems it's also painful and seemingly not worth it by design. Whenever they can make the process so painful that going through it essentially pays way less than your wage they can get away with it 99% of the time.
I’ve never had to get a new card/number after a chargeback.
You just get the charge removed or some amount deducted if it’s approved. You aren’t requesting a new card.
edit: This was for a purchase I made but didn’t receive exactly what I paid for. Now for fraudulent charges I didn’t make, yes they send a new card. I’m in the US, maybe it’s different elsewhere.
Once during the first year of the covid pandemic, I requested a couple meals for me and my wife through the Uber eats for lunch, my wife was accompanying in the hospital my mother-in-law on Sunday, then after suddenly the place informed the meals was delivered, but I didn't received anything. After I tried to discuss with Uber eats, I had appealled for the credit card, they full refund me.
I've had the same many many times. I think almost universally it's fair that the product/provider upgrades your experience when you agree to pay for something, but when they are specifically telling you "pay x and we'll give you y" and then they give you <y that's, I think, shitty.
Of course, that happens, but the point is that it's a crapshoot, and you don't know what you're gonna get until the driver confirms, and you don't know what the car's actual condition is until you get in. And regardless, it's always reasonable for someone to provide you a better service/product than you paid for, but it's never ok to do the opposite.
With Waymo, you know what you're going to get every time. I've also never experienced a Waymo interior that was in bad shape when I got in the car, though I'm sure that does happen to people.
$3 isn't this kind of a small problem?
I miss rideshare service, in Denmark we have mess of expensive high quality taxis that you cannot get hold of when you need one.
$3 is small enough that almost everyone will just eat the cost. I have a theory that they do this intentionally in some things(well Uber I've never used lift). Almost every time I order food and something is wrong or missing they'll give me a refund that is $2-3 off what it should be. Like if I order a $5 item and it's missing their service will refund me $2. At that point I can chose to spend literally an hour going through different support flows to try to reach a human who will correct it and give me the extra $2 or I can eat the loss. It's happened to me at least a dozen times now so I imagine it's common enough across the whole world to add millions of revenue each year.
Speaking of small costs, some time ago I paid 2 euros with my credit card in order to enter the central train station toilets in Milan, Italy.
The toilets were awfully dirty, there was no toilet paper and no soap. I took some pictures just in case, then I filed a chargeback with my bank. After some weeks, they gave me my 2 euros back, and the company that manages the toilets probably paid a small fine to MasterCard or whatever.
Was it a waste of time, for just 2 euros? Sure. But if nobody starts complaining, nothing will ever be fixed.
> Was it a waste of time, for just 2 euros? Sure. But if nobody starts complaining, nothing will ever be fixed.
This is how I feel. Money is money. If you don't complain, why not just start donating to these corporations? It's effectively the same thing. I've successfully argued over a difference of $0.90 on a restaurant order (they rung up a different appetizer than I actually ordered). If you don't push back, they'll never get better.
Funny you say this, a year or two ago I contacted Amazon about adjusting the price for something I had ordered the day prior, since it went on sale. It hadn't shipped yet, and they said no problem, we'll refund you the $7 price difference - but we can't do that until the item arrives, just contact us when it does.
So I get the item, contact support for my price match and they say sorry, we can only give you $5 back. I get upset because that's not what I was told, and have a screenshot of the chat to prove it.
We went back and forth forever, I got more and more angry and eventually returned the item for the full amount, and prime had just recently renewed and was in the refund window, so I got a refund for that.
Unfortunately I need Prime where I live, so I signed up for it again a few days later, but used a free trial month.
The whole thing was a giant waste of time, and felt very "optimized".
Doordash did to me for 70cents or so once. There was a missing item in an order, no big deal, app let's you report it, and the exact item that was missing.
But instead of refunding the $2 it cost, they refunded like $1.19 or something to that affect.
DoorDash.. either the drivers can selectively identify the most expensive entree and remove it without disturbing anything… or restaurant owners figured out they could just leave it out without any real penalty. Happened so many times I got tired of arguing and chargebacks and moved on. No issues with other services.. someone figured out a grift.
I'm not sure I'm reading you correctly, but if you mean it's a small problem because $3 isn't much money then, heck yes, it's a microscopic problem (is there something smaller than microscopic because if so then it's whatever that thing is)! But I didn't bring it up to complain about the $3 per se. I can elaborate, but I'm not sure if that's what you were specifically referring to or if I'm misunderstanding your question.
A tiny problem, that would cost them nothing to fix, and they chose not to. This is a story about shitty customer service, not $3 being lost.
You can dispute via your credit card. They'll care quickly enough.
The $3 often makes the difference between someone that should not be allowed to have a drivers license, and a someone that's been driving high-end limos for years.
For example, I once had a driver that heard regenerative breaking was good for fuel economy, so decided to cycle their busted prius between 60mpg and 70mph every few seconds on the freeway. I was carsick for 2 hours after that ride. Another time, I had an angry line of people tapping the windows and politely giving the driver some unsolicited advice. (The mob was right; I mostly just tried to hide my face.)
So, the $3 is a big problem, but has nothing to do with money.
Worth knowing that Uber bought Dantaxi, Denmark's largest Taxi company a couple of weeks ago. The Uber app will tap in to Dantaxi driver pool. https://www.uber.com/en-DK/newsroom/dantaxi/
I wonder if strong worker unions and regulations forced Uber to buy an existing company rather than starting their own presence.
this is so rampant but they know they have a captive market (in many places, only uber or lyft are an option) so they abuse their position
I've had good experiences with Uber. I know others don't, but I have. I used to use Lyft but they treated me like shit so now I don't. If Uber starts treating me like shit I'm going back to taxis. If taxis treat me like shit I'll take the bus, walk, buy a car, or any of the dozens of other ways to get around, even if impractical. The market is only captive because people are lazy and weak willed.
$3 sure but you're already paying $XX for the service in the first place.
> $3 isn't this kind of a small problem?
Its the principle, not the size of the cost. If a company with good customer service accidentally overcharged me $200 but I could call someone and have it fixed easily that would set me off far less than a company that screwed me out of $1 who has shit-tier dark pattern customer service.
all "cab"-like cars that are not shaped like London Black Cabs are failures. The seating and luggage carrying is so much better than a regular car it makes me sick.
I'm on holiday in Japan at the moment and I notice the cabs look like London cabs and are mainly black too. Made by Toyota. I haven't yet taken one, so I don't know if the similarity extends to the interior layout.
I would pay extra just to never ride in a Tesla. They always make me carsick.
> ... Tesla. They always make me carsick.
> Is it the rapid acceleration from the electric motor
Yes. The hard acceleration and braking.
First, thank you to share you first-hand experiences. This is one of the best features of HN discussions.
I promise that I am not trolling with these follow-up questions:
Have you ever ridden in a "super car" (Ferrari, etc.) that also has very fast accel/braking? Do you experience the same?
If a Tesla driver just drove a bit less aggressively, would you not get car sick? Did you ever try "FSD" on a Tesla on regular streets? Is the accel/braking still strong enough to make you feel car sick?
I ask all of these question honestly. If I was an electric car maker, I would definitely be concerned about it. To me, it fits the same problem of VR headsets where some people get "VR sick" (like car sick) when using them. They probably spend an enormous amount R&D trying to reduce this effect to a minimum for as many people as possible.
People don't hate automation. They hate BAD automation.
From your description seems like: Waymo -> Good Automation, Call Center -> Bad Automation.
The day we will have a chatgpt level automated customer care experience, we will complain every time humans answer our requests, with their accents and attitudes!
Oh man, hope it's ok to poke a little fun. I think we just violently agreed with me praising automation from one company and deriding automation from another. So I'll update your "seems like": Riding with Waymo (IME) -> Good Automation, Lyft customer support when they "stole" $3 from me and didn't provide me with a way to fix it -> Bad Automation.
In the broad sense, people are in favor of automation. Most people aren't clamoring for the days before the stove, dishwasher, and car (all automated versions of past technologies).
That being said, I think a lot of people are against automation when it does something worse than the manual version. Think automated customer service over a human being.
I don't see people hating that their network packets are automatically routed through the internet
People paying more for Waymo doesn’t surprise me. I also once called for a comfort car, but it was a filthy Lexus. I’d much rather ride in a clean and well maintained Corolla.
I pay more for Waymo and I’m happy to do it (as long as Waymo can detect when its interior is dirty so it can return itself to home base for cleaning.) I don’t have to sit awkwardly in a car with another guy who may drive in a way that annoys me. I can talk on my phone or with my family without having a random person listen in.
I have only used car share once in my life. (My mother ordered it, and it was fine.) To me, a dirty car is pretty much unforgivable as a car share service. Do you report it on the app or just give a one/zero star rating and hope the car share service will fix it?
> I don’t have to sit awkwardly in a car with another guy who may drive
The Uber comfort designation frustratingly has nothing to do with the condition of the vehicle. I believe the parameters are age, seats, and model.
From the driver's point of view, it just means that you are allowed to accept comfort rides but most of the time you're probably going to be picking up UberX passengers which are more plentiful. That means you're only slightly more likely to get one of the good comfort vehicles if you actually select the comfort tier.
Another recent anecdote.
A friend was recently in Milwaukee (first time ever. He was there for a conference).
He, his wife, and another friend, wanted to go out to eat.
They were given a wrong address. Could have been the source, or it could have been they screwed up writing it down. It was definitely a wrong address, though, that they gave to Uber.
The driver picked them up, and took them to the address, which was deep in Da Hood. Not a good area for three middle-class white folks to be wandering around.
The driver insisted they get out, even though it was clearly a wrong address, and a downright dangerous neighborhood (my friend has some experience with rough neighborhoods. If he said it was bad, it was bad).
My friend offered to pay whatever it took, to get to the correct address (they had figured out their mistake, by then), but the driver refused to do that. It was probably algorithmically prohibited.
My friend had never used Uber before (and never will, again), so wasn’t aware that you are supposed to be able to appeal to Uber.
I have a feeling that my friend offered to rearrange the driver’s dental work (Did I mention that he was familiar with tough neighborhoods?), and got the driver to drop them off in a better area, where they caught a cab.
Sounds like a bad customer experience. I doubt Uber ever heard the story. My friend never bothered contacting them, and I will bet that the driver didn’t.
If I was that driver, you bet I'd be contacting Uber to try and get your friend banned for life. Threatening a driver is never ok, even less so when it's not his fault.
Then maybe don't threaten to leave a family in a dangerous area while they're offering to pay it
Threatening someone for being a complete asshole is always okay, and even cool.
I really do not care how uncomfortable it makes the driver to move a family a few extra blocks to somewhere vaguely safe. I’d similarly threaten him if he tried to drop my family off in a forest, or on the side of a highway, even if that’s what the GPS, God’s Position System, tells them to do.
If your job ends in a way that someone who was your customer is now in danger, you absolutely deserve to be threatened.
If your friend thinks it's okay to threaten to assault a driver, especially for an issue that wasn't the driver's fault, then it sounds like "da hood" is where he belongs...
Not sure if he did. He probably didn’t have to. He’s a big guy, but also one of the most decent people I know (but let’s not assume anything). He never said he did. It was my assumption (ASS out of U and ME). It’s also possible he bribed the driver enough. He could certainly afford it. I didn’t actually ask him. I do know that he (and the two women with him) were pretty terrified of being left in the middle of that area, and scared people can get pretty pithy. This guy used to run night clubs in Miami. It would probably have been a lot less of an issue, if he had been alone.
What he was amazed at, was the driver’s insistence that they get out, without any recourse or care. A Waymo could do the same, I guess, but they could also sit in it until the company contacted them, or the cops showed up.
A New York cabbie would probably threaten him right back, but would also have known they were headed for a bad patch, and maybe have asked if they had the right address. This was their first time ever, in Milwaukee, and I suspect Milwaukee cabbies are of a similar stripe to New York cabbies. I know quite a few former cabbies.
Funny how the least verifiable thing in the story is the one everyone hooked on. I guess I could ask him. It happened last week. Not sure if I’d want to spoil everyone’s good time calling him a criminal, if it turns out he was just able to shame the driver into accepting a couple of Jacksons to get out of there. If he did, I suspect Uber would sanction the driver, for accepting a fare, outside their system.
The only difference with the Waymo experience would be that there would be nobody your friend could threaten to assault for putting in the wrong address.
The Waymo also can't force you to get out. Probably you can just give it a new address.
Heh, from the sounds of things it’s more likely the Waymo would have simply driven to their actual destination.
Huh? Your friend paid uber to take them to an address, and they did.
Actually, it sounds like my friend was robbed. Classic gypsy cab robbery.
You’ve got to invest with the VC money. As companies mature and enshitification begins, jump onto the next hot thing that’s going to disrupt the now incumbent.
There’s no free lunch, but this is the closest we’ve got.
another anecdote taking Lyft - they showed me $10.76 price for a trip to the airport when Uber showed $21. obviously i called Lyft and they placed a temporary charge on my credit card for $10.76. Once the driver dropped me off, i noticed that the base charge jumped to $16.76 + airport fees and my total with tips came to a bit over $27. I contacted Lyft and they denied and claimed that they always showed me $16.76. smh. i have proof from my credit card that they placed a hold for $10.76 and yet they refused to adjust the price.
why do you think you will get better service with waymo when it's as established as the others?
the whole market is a race to the bottom to extract rent from what should have been a municipality cost center.
oh, do you like waymo automated support and driver better than Lyft automated support? or just can't imagine a world where tomorrow waymo will have aging cars too?
As a Waymo-booster on HN for a while now, here's my latest anecdote. I tried to figure out how to take Waymo to LAX even though it's not actually in their territory yet just because I value the experience so much. I was borderline going to take it within walking distance (about half a mile), but got lazy at the last minute. I took Lyft instead, and, as if the universe cursed my laziness, I booked a "comfort" car for $3 more than the base level Lyft. At first I was going to get a Tesla Model Y to take me, but that cancelled. Instead, what must have been a first generation Honda Pilot picked me up, suspension creaking and muffler that had seen better days. Did Lyft recognize what they sent instead of the "comfort" they promised and therefore charge me $3 less? Of course not. When I tried to contact customer service I ran into what I'm sure plenty of HN people have, which is a dead end where you report the issue and they (programmatically?) adjudicate the complaint on the spot. Their determination? I wasn't entitled to a $3 refund. Ironic that the rideshare app with human drivers doesn't allow me to contact their customer service whereas Waymo has no problem with it (yeah, yeah, I get it, "we'll see once they reach a huge scale." But today the experience is so much better than Uber or Lyft that while it lasts I will bask in its driverless glory).